Judge Orders Limewire To Shut Down; Limewire Pretends It Can Still Exist

from the yeah,-ok dept

This is hardly a surprise, given the earlier ruling, but the judge in the Limewire case has now ruled in favor of the RIAA that Limewire needs to shut down "the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality." Basically, all of the functionality. Amusingly, Limewire is pretending it can still function without any... er... functions:

An important point of clarification, LimeWire is not “shutting down”, in specific regarding our software, we are compelled to use our best efforts cease support and distribution of the file-sharing software, along with increased filtering. And, that is what we are doing.

Of course, we've seen similar file sharing apps make similar claims when the judge's hammer came down, and they all went away. Of course, it's not like this actually means anything, other than the fact that people who want to file share have already moved on to other apps and services (mostly overseas) that are even less likely and less willing to work with the recording industry, and which will be that much harder to shut down. One by one, the RIAA has killed off the few firms that actually had an interest in trying to work with the industry, so everyone has gone to the groups that want nothing to do with the RIAA in any format.